Author Elizabeth Strout discusses her ‘Boys’ at library

By JUSTIN McCABE Villager Staff Writer

Published
8:04 am EDT, Thursday, April 17, 2014

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout was a guest of the Wilton Library last Thursday evening. Strout discussed and answered questions on her most recent novel, “The Burgess Boys”, as well as her past works and writing techniques

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout was a guest of the Wilton Library last Thursday evening. Strout discussed and answered questions on her most recent novel, “The Burgess Boys”, as well as her

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout was a guest of the Wilton Library last Thursday evening. Strout discussed and answered questions on her most recent novel, “The Burgess Boys”, as well as her past works and writing techniques

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout was a guest of the Wilton Library last Thursday evening. Strout discussed and answered questions on her most recent novel, “The Burgess Boys”, as well as her

Speaking in the library’s Brubeck Room before a full-capacity audience, Strout discussed and answered questions on her most recent novel, “The Burgess Boys”, as well as her past works and writing techniques.

As a participant in the library’s Author Talk series, Strout was interviewed by veteran book discussion leader Susan Boyar.

Boyar asked the author from where her novels originate.

“I don’t ever really know what it is that drives me to begin a story or novel,” Strout said. “There are certain ideas that just don’t go away.”

As far as “The Burgess Boys” is concerned, Strout explained that the idea of the main characters had been stuck with her for a long time before she began writing their story.

The eponymous brothers of the novel flee to New York City and pursue careers in law in the wake of a tragic accident during their childhood in Maine.

All of this bears echoes of Strout’s own life; the author graduated from law school and spends much of her time in New York City.

However, Strout’s was a happier childhood in the Pine Tree State, a location which she has frequently used as the setting for her works.

The traits of the residents in her native New England are also of enduring interest to Strout, who on Thursday evening described the people who live there as “stoic” and not prone to share their deepest feelings or fears.

Such is the case with Jim and Bob Burgess, whose unwillingness to address their shared, tormented past causes a rift in what is typically the closest of relationships — that which is between two siblings.

“We like to think we know other people, we believe that myth because we don’t want to acknowledge how alone we are,” Strout explained to her audience.

This aloneness can extend even to our family and friends, Strout intimated.

It is literature’s ability to bypass that aloneness that Strout said appealed most to her, since reading is like “being in another person’s head.”

Other themes besides the relationship between family members that Strout said “The Burgess Boys” addresses included the regrets and reflections that come with aging into one’s 50s, the division between classes and the issue of race, religion and identity.

The latter theme is addressed by way of the main characters’ nephew, who is arrested for throwing a severed pig’s head into a mosque during prayer. This crime was based on a real-world incident that occurred in Maine in 2006.

Strout said this blending of reality into fiction was “a departure” for her, but said that the incident resonated with her and fit right in with what she already had planned for the novel.

In addition to “The Burgess Boys”, Strout spoke about “Olive Kitteridge,” her 2008 novel that garnered her Pulitzer Prize and whose title character was clearly beloved by many of those in attendance on Thursday night.

When asked by one audience member how a rumored HBO project based on “Olive Kitteridge” was progressing, Strout said she didn’t know much beyond the facts that a four-part miniseries was in production and that Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand had been cast in the lead role, news that was greeted with an excited buzz throughout the room.

Strout also described her daily writing routine in response to a query from another person in attendance.

The author sticks to a strict “three hours or three pages” regimen which, while effective, would make for boring viewing for anyone watching her according to Strout, who mimed staring off into space with her head in hand to laughter from the audience.

Near the end of the evening in the Brubeck Room, one more member of the audience asked Strout about her future projects, on which she was coy.

By way of explanation, Strout described prospective writers who share with her ideas of the stories they want to work on, which in her mind ruins the joy and surprise that discovering those ideas through reading brings.

“There is this building of pressure until you just have to put it on page,” Strout said. “And no one else can put it there because it is yours.”